The Neighbors
Added: August 31, 2000
Airing: 2:30-3:00 p.m. Monday-Friday, December 29 through the end of the year, ABC.
Personnel:
Regis Philbin, host; Jane Nelson, assistant/model; Joe Seiter, announcer. A Carruthers Company-Warner Brothers Television Production. Produced in Los Angeles.Description:
The Newlywed Game, only more annoying.Game Play:
Five women would appear each day, two as actual contestants and the other three as a panel of sorts. (I have no idea how it was decided which of the women – all neighbors in real life – would be the contestants and which wouldn’t.) In the first half of the game, a piece of information was read by host Philbin and the contestants had to decide if it referred to her opponent or one of the other neighbors. Correct answers were worth $25 apiece.In the second half, the contestants listened to gossip made about her and had to determine which of the three panelists had made the statement. Correct answers were worth $100. In the final round, Philbin again read a statement and the contestants had to determine who the statement was about. (I have no idea how this was scored; perhaps the players were allowed to bet any or all of their winnings to this point.) The contestant ahead by the end of the game was declared the winner.
End Game:
None. I would assume the winning contestant received some sort of bonus prize. And probably used their winnings to build a big fence around their property.Background:
The Neighbors debuted at the end of 1975, with ABC shuffling Rhyme and Reason from 2:30 to 1:30, and long-running Let’s Make a Deal all the way to 12 noon, replacing the cancelled Showoffs. Regis Philbin, who had just leapt back into prominence by taking over the local A.M. Los Angeles, was selected to host his first game show.Naughty Neighbors:
Produced Bill Carruthers learned from the best – he had served as a producer and director for Chuck Barris, king of the offbeat and off-color. Carruthers worked on The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game, and The Family Game (a short-running 1967 Barris show that was most notable for being the only Bob Barker-hosted game show that didn’t run 20 years or more). The Neighbors, as can be noted from the description, was very much like The Newlywed Game in its titillation factor, but suffered visually from having five middle-aged contestants rather than four cute young just-married couples.Neighborhood Values:
Surprisingly, I’ve read (either on the newsgroup alt.tv-game-shows or on Steve Beverly’s Game Show Convention Center page, I’m not sure which) that this show actually got high ratings its first few weeks. That aside, in my opinion it wasn’t well thought out. Besides the show’s obviously derivative nature, contestants have to come from somewhere other than the Los Angeles area to keep a show interesting, but the show’s prizes weren’t big enough to entice five women from the same neighborhood to travel to the Vine Street Theater to participate in this show. ABC also made an error in scheduling – the show ran as the last third of a game show block that started with the humor-based Rhyme and Reason, then switched to the fast-paced and serious The $10,000 Pyramid. Placing another game in need of laughs at the opposite end made no sense. Basically, if ABC had wanted The Newlywed Game back, they should have put a call through to Chuck Barris. For whatever reason, they didn’t.In any case, ratings must have dropped (or the show may have embarrassed ABC honcho Fred Silverman, unlikely as this may sound), because it was dropped by ABC April 9, a mere 15 weeks after its arrival. ABC replaced it with Break the Bank, and good taste and good ratings returned to the 2:30 time slot.
Regis’ Side:
Regis Philbin’s career has taken some strange turns. He began his on-air career as a reporter and news anchorman in San Diego, soon adding a Saturday night talk show. His first national talk show, the syndicated That Regis Philbin Show, died after six months in 1965, but he came back as Joey Bishop’s announcer/sidekick on The Joey Bishop Show, a 1967 ABC attempt to lure some of the talk show audience away from Johnny Carson. Regis (can anyone seriously refer to him as "Philbin"?) was most noted for walking out on Bishop on a live broadcast partway through the run, a planned stunt that failed to goose the ratings. He met his second wife, Joy, on the show, as she was Bishop’s assistant (a first marriage ended in divorce). The two married in 1970, shortly after ABC dropped Bishop’s show for Dick Cavett.Regis bounced around for a few years with talk shows in St. Louis and Los Angeles, and at one point had fallen to doing sports reports in Denver. But in 1975, after taking a job reviewing movies on KABC in Los Angeles, he was offered the hosting job on A.M. Los Angeles, the station’s morning talk show. Cohosting with Sarah Purcell (who would later host her own game show, The Better Sex), this gave him a second shot at fame, and apparently put him in good stead at the network, who gave him two national vehicles in late 1975 and early 1976. Unfortunately, they gave him this show and
Almost Anything Goes.Regis would move to New York for a short-lived half-hour talk show on NBC in 1981, then would host WABC’s The Morning Show with Cyndi Garvey (later to be replaced by Ann Abernathy, then Kathie Lee Johnson), as well as a health show on Lifetime. It would be The Morning Show that would give him his next career boost, as the show went into syndication as Live With Regis and Kathie Lee in 1989. I must assume everyone here has heard about Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, so I will just mention Regis is currently going at it alone on Live (Kathie Lee having departed in the summer of 2000), and will soon have his second autobiography, Who Wants to Be Me?, out in stores soon (his first, I’m Only One Man!, can be found on some remainder tables and used book stores).
The Home Game:
None. I suspect you could pick up a copy of the board game "Scruples" and achieve the same results (if fracturing long-time friendships is what you’re after).Reruns:
I would think Regis would have bought up the tapes and personally presided over the bonfire, but I saw a clip of this show on a recent E! game show documentary, so somebody must have a tape somewhere.Revivals:
Oh, the horror.Curt Alliaume, Executive Producer:
I’ll stay in publishing, thank you.My 1975 Grade:
F.E-Mail Me With Your Memories of The Neighbors
The Neighbors is a copyrighted title of Carruthers Company-Warner Brothers Television. This page is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Carruthers Productions, Time Warner, their subsidiaries, affiliates, or successor organizations. No challenge to their ownership is implied.
Read a book today.